Sound Spill at the Zabludowicz Collection New York

The Zabludowicz Collection has unveiled the list of artists featured in Sound Spill, a group exhibition curated by Thom O’Nions and Richard Sides, a curator and an artist who have been awarded a curatorial research grant to develop the exhibition after a research period in New York City. Sound Spill brings together existing works from the Zabludowicz Collection alongside a series of new commissions and works selected by the curators in the lead up to the exhibition. The curators have selected artists from London and New York, creating a transatlantic, multidisciplinary exhibition.

Sound Spill is an ongoing project by Thom O’Nions, Richard Sides and Haroon Mirza which sets out to examine how sound inhabits an exhibition space, particularly the way in which it spills or bleeds into and between artworks. The interaction of the sound made by each work dictates and structures their arrangement, creating a composition. This model allows for unexpected relationships to be highlighted between works in contrast to a traditional thematic approach to exhibition-making.

This will be its fifth manifestation after versions online and in the UK at S1, Sheffield; Spike Island, Bristol and Seventeen, London as well as at West in Den Haag, The Netherlands. This iteration of the project will be divided into two sections, the first on the 7th floor of the building and the second on the 33rd floor. The 7th floor will feature existing works by Cory Arcangel, André Avelãs, John Baldessari, Michael Bell-Smith, Peter Coffin, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Oliver Payne, Amalia Pica, Seth Price, Hannah Sawtell, Raphaël Zarka alongside a new commission by Trisha Baga. The interaction of the sounds made by each work will dictate and structure their arrangement, creating a curated composition. This allows for unexpected relationships to be highlighted between the works in contrast to a traditional thematic approach to exhibition-making.

Featuring all new commissions, for the 33rd floor the curators have worked with Aaron S. Davidson and Melissa Dubbin, incorporating their project Volumes for Sound into the exhibition. Davidson and Dubbin were invited to produce a new set of sound amplifying objects which the curators put forward to a group of 8 artists, asking them to produce a new multichannel sound work that responds to the ideas of the Sound Spill exhibition as well as addressing the particularities of the Volumes for Sound project. It will feature works by Ben Cain, David Raymond Conroy, Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, Lesley Flanigan, James Hoff, Stephen Sharp and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, Lucky Dragons, Lorenzo Senni, and Ben Vida.

The curators’ research will form the basis for a publication and can be followed at soundspill.org. It will feature contributions by a number of artists in the exhibition and outside of it and forms a third site for the Sound Spill project to inhabit.